# Monday, October 27, 2008

Windows Azure For Developers

Windows Azure has just been announced at PDC 2008. And information is now available online from http://www.microsoft.com/azure/default.mspx.

Drilling into the features for developers there is a video interview with Steve Marx that outlines Azure from a developer perspective:

  • His blog http://blog.smarx.com/default.aspx hosted on Windows Azure.
  • Aim to use current skills and technology that they are used to. Built around .Net I.e.
    • Use Visual Studio
    • .Net 3.5
    • IIS 7
    • Windows Communication Foundation
  • Only difference is that it runs on the cloud or Fabric of components.
  • Client side local development experience to test before deployment
    • Azure API's
    • Debugging
    • Ability to emulate Simulate scale via Visualised Compute.
    • Synchronised state
    • Azure storage available (Blobs, Tables)
  • Deployment, VS.Net deploy package and configuration file to a web portal.
  • Question about management:
    • Framework will restart application is required
    • Logging and metering
    • Integration with Windows Live Alerts to send information about service
    • Ability to deploy new versions seamlessly
  • Ability to set metrics "e.g. Queue length, response time" to trigger scale out.
  • Ability to scale out on demand if required (IIS and SQL Services).
  • Currently in CTP.
  • Programming Differences
    • Horizontal Scale - Store state centralised so that it can be accessed by any machine in the virtual web farm
      • e.g. Web Farm - Save shopping cart
    • Using in blob or table helps eliminate bottlenecks of centralised SQL Server for persistence of state.
  • Ability to create services that can be leveraged buy other users e.g. Email service gateway.
  • Service Discovery, still determine plans about how create Market Place of services over the next Year e.g.
    • Find Services
    • What do they cost
    • Ratings for services
    • Ability to integrate services in the development environment
  • Technology
    • RESTful interface
    • Manages & Unmanaged Code
    • Can be used from Python, Ruby etc
  • Does not have to be web form applications could just be a REST interface to a headless service.

# Comments [0] Monday, October 27, 2008 5:48:06 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00) Related posts:
BabySmash At PDC
azure | pdc

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